Review of Tomb Raider (2018) by Greg C — 18 Mar 2018

Incredible, as in not believable. This Tomb Raider is OK and soooo close to being good. Tomb Raider is not inspired by the video games; it is the LC reboot video game. I am fond of Alicia Vikander's work.

She is certainly trying to make the best of what she is given here. The problem with this Tomb Raider is mostly in the story construction. It hits all the informational beats, but it is almost frenetic about it.

Almost as soon as she is on a boat for the mysterious island, they are having to abandon it. When they could quietly try to evade the evil guards, our heroes quickly get into an avoidable shootout. This movie is a visual storyboard construction, with action scenes at almost every turn.

Some of the running-from-danger CG is very video game like and so not believable, it knocked me out the believing the story. TR should have been released mid-summer as mindless entertainment. There are the emotional backstory moments between Lara and her father.

The villain is not great, even though the writers give it a go. He has been on the island for 7 years away from his daughters. The time and isolation make him a bit crazy. He complains about not having anyone to talk to, although there appears to be a lot of people under his "command" on this island.

The intention was to make him come off as complex, but ultimately he a pretty simple bad guy. There are attempts to capitalize on the #girlpower momentum and to be a bit like Wonder Woman, but Croft is no demi-god.

She suffers a "practically" unrecoverable abdominal wound that should have simply been cut of the story. Croft gets really beat up, by villians and jungle terrain, but seems to come out with only a few scratches, aside from the aforementioned wound.

The 2001 Angelina Jolie Raider, introduced us to a Lara who was in command of her money and training to do danger missions. This Vikander bicycle messenger fails to get me to suspend my belief as much.

There is an airplane scene where life threatening events are stacked one upon another, during which Croft sums up my issues with this movie nicely by looking straight at the camera and saying "Really?!".

The best cameo is by Nick Frost (Shawn of the Dead). I loved him for his 3 to 4 minutes of footage. The character I am really sorry for is Lu Ren played by Daniel Wu, because in the role reversal, he basically gets sidelined as the almost pointless damsel in distress.